Appeals Court Denies Rehearing

If folks are following the news carefully, you may have seen an article saying that the Appeals Court denied the LASD petition for rehearing.

It should be clear to all that this was an expected outcome. In order to take a case from the Appeals Court to the Supreme Court, you first have to ask the Appeals Court if they want to reconsider their ruling. We did that, and of course we got the expected outcome- they said "no, we like the decision we just made".

This ruling clears the way for the Supreme Court to hear the case, should they decide to take it on. They have until Feb 6th to make that decision. Although the Supreme Court takes a relatively small percentage of cases that petition for a hearing, we believe there is a good chance that they'll take on this case for a number of reasons. For one thing, the issue at hand is a matter of public policy, which generally makes it more interesting than a typical civil case. Also, we believe that there are significant disagreements between the recent Sixth District ruling and the rulings of other California Appeals Court rulings on charter schools. One of the primary functions of the Supreme Court is to resolve differences from the Appeals Courts.

We will keep everyone posted on the petition to the Supreme Court, and we look forward to their decision.

Happy Thanksgiving to all, LASD and BCS alike.

Bloomberg article

I get a fair number of calls from the press, mostly local but sometimes with a wider audience. John Hechinger from Bloomberg spoke with a number of folks at LASD and BCS, and attended the BCS renewal hearing recently. Here's a link to the article he wrote.

( link )

Approriate for your young reader?

This post doesn't deal with ed policy, but I thought it might be interesting to parents of school-age kids. 

In our household, both of my girls are voracious readers.  I wish I could say that it's all Shakespeare and Chaucer, but I'll admit that their girls like a wide variety of fiction.  Fortunately, my wife usually has time to pre-screen much of that material.  (Any aprent who has actually read the entire Twilight series knows what I'm talking about.)

I found out recently that a friend's wife is involved with a web site that provides book reviews aimed at parents of school-aged kids.  The site authors read books that kids are interested in reading, then provide information and reviews that help parents decide if that book is appropriate for their child. 

My wife had a chance to check out some of the reviews and felt that it did a good job of summarizing the plot and highlighting the parts of the story that might be of concern. It's not overly judgemental, but it lays out in clear terms what the issues might be, so that you can decide for yourself how you think your child might handle the material.  Maybe it will be helpful for your family.

http://storysnoops.com/

New Board Member

In Open Session this evening, we had something of an historic moment- the four Board members elected a new Board member to replace retiring Board member Margot Harrigan.  I'm pleased to report that we selected Steve Taglio to the Board to serve out the remaining 1 year on Margot's term.

We definitely had "an embarrassment of riches"- four well qualified candidates stepped forward and were willing to serve on the Board.  We had an extensive debate, and had two different votes to elect Steve to the Board.

In the long run, there were two candidates in my mind who could have filled this role exceptionally well.  I hope to see Mark B. step forward at future dates to serve- I believe he brings great skills to the equation, and could be a big plus for us.  Meanwhile, though, I also welcome Steve to the Board, and look forward to serving with him.

BCS Litigation - continued

Tonight in closed session, the Board voted authorize our attorneys to appeal the recent BCS court case to the California Supreme Court.  This was not a simple decision, but in my mind, there were a number of factors that came together to make this the right course of action:

• We fundamentally disagree with the Court of Appeals ruling, both on the merits and the method on which they arrived at the decision.  "On the merits" is pretty simple- we believe that the court took as "fact" many assertions by BCS that are not complete or correct.  Equally important, the process they followed to evaluate this was incorrect- it placed the interests of the BCS students ahead of LASD students, rather than balancing those interests.  Prop 39 requires a balancing of interests of both groups.
• The Appeals Court fundamentally said that we can only use a very narrow set of criteria to evaluate how we meet the BCS request- and that set of criteria is actually narrower than what is provided under Prop 39.  The legal language of Prop 39 allows for discretion by the elected Board of Trustees.  The Court of Appeals ruling seems to strip this discretion, which seems contrary to the intent of the voters when they passed Prop 39. 
• The discretion of elected Boards has been upheld in multiple Appellate rulings throughout California.  That discretion is essential in trying to come to the best possible solution to difficult questions like how to share a fixed set of resources like facilities.  This new ruling seems to fly against those precedents, and could have significant impact on students not only in LASD, but across California.

I recognize that appealing this decision will not be popular with some members of our community.  Certainly BCS supporters will be opposed.  Ironically I argued against them appealing this case in the first place (link).  In this case, though, I can't reconcile myself to what I believe the Appeals Court should have done, and what they ended up doing.  The impacts of this decision are too large to ignore, and I can't let the interests of a subset of students put all other students into a distant second place.

I've already been asked about the 2012-13 Prop 39 process.  We'll still need to figure that out, just like we'll need to continue to move forward with the Long Term location discussions we opened last week.  This litigation will need to run in parallel.  I hope that there is still room for constructive dialogue on these other issues- we will need to continue to communicate our interests to one another if we have any hope of working out solutions we can all support.